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and sid wells informing them that he had gone home to his parents' house and he would be back in a couple of days. what was interesting to the police was that there were a number of small spots of blood found underneath the note that thayne smika wrote. >> it appeared that the note from thayne to sid and sam and the envelope had been placed there after mr. wells was shot. >> somebody placed that envelope after the murder, after the murder. that puts thayne smika as suspect number one. >> the police drove to search the house of thayne smika's mother. shock. absolute complete mystification.
i had two younger brothers, sid and sam, and a great dad who loved the outdoors. i mean, colorado, it doesn't get any better than this. we came from very humble roots. i would say we were lower middle class but when it came to the richness of love in the family, i think we were at the upper scale. very, very close family. >> sid was fun, outgoing. could be obnoxious at times. kind of a joking comic, always kind of a funny attitude. >> sid, he's everybody's best friend. knows no stranger. very popular in high school band, good athlete. he was just an amazing guy. everybody loved him. >> he was studying journalism and going to the navy rotc program there at the university of colorado as well.
on august 1st of 1983, i received a phone call from my brother, sam. he told me sid was gone, that he was killed, and murdered, and that he walked in and found him. >> the first thing the police look for in any type of a homicide scene is sign of a forced entry through the door or window, or a sign of a struggle and they didn't see any sign that there had been an obvious burglary, robbery or assault in this apartment. that leads investigators to think that they should be looking from within, they should be looking at roommates or friends or relatives or people who had access to this apartment, people who had access to sid wells. in this case, the police started their investigation with sam wells. >> they proceeded to ask me all kinds of questions.
erratically. they thought that he was using drugs and just kind of going downhill fast. we also interviewed another witness. jeff cohen was a friend of sid's. we learned from jeff that everybody had been up the night before into the early morning hours of august 1st. he told us that what was supposed to happen that evening or early morning was thayne was supposed to return some money to sid and in addition to paying the rent, was also going to give sid some additional money and some cocaine. jeff told us that his friend sid had been selling small amounts of cocaine in the previous months, and that sid had
we pulled a box off the shelf and inside that box, we found a 20 gauge shotgun. we knew that mr. wells had been killed with a 20 gauge shotgun. what added to that suspicion was thayne smika's sister lived in the house, telling us that they had just cleaned that room and that previous to august 1st, 1983, that gun wasn't in that bedroom. i remember feeling at the time that we probably had our man. >> in early october, 1983, thayne smika was arrested for murder in the first degree. >> we heard thayne smika had been arrested, we were elated. i thought got the family settled down, law enforcement did their job, boom, we're going to get the rest of the story now and really find out what happened to sid. >> i certainly had a feeling of relief that we had solved the
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suspected that thayne smika was stealing cocaine from sid. it's our belief that thayne smika that night didn't have the cocaine or the money to give back to sidney wells. >> i'm the father of a college student, and i think it would be very naive to not think that your college-aged son might be trying recreational drugs. he might sell recreational drugs here or there. it's not a reason for someone to kill sid wells. it's not a reason for police not to investigate this case. sid wells was murdered in cold blood. that's what this case is about. >> at this stage of the investigation, thayne smika is the focus.
sid was -- had a girlfriend at the time named shauna redford. after a couple, two, three dates, he called me and said you won't believe this, i just found out i'm dating robert redford's daughter. >> sid and shauna had been dating for almost three years. and they were just a fun couple to be around, very much in love. >> we had a condo in boulder, colorado called the spanish towers. it was great, because sid was going to school there so he could live there all through his college days. >> sam moved in the summer of 1983. >> he needed a roommate so i filled in for the summer. got to hang out and get to know
were met by sam wells at the elevator. sam took them into the apartment and on the living room floor of the apartment, they found sidney wells dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the head. >> shauna redford just had seen sid a couple hours before. he was alive and well, and then to come back and find out that he had been killed, you have absolutely horrific news. >> at 4:00, my boss called me to the front of the store and said that there was someone that needed to see me. it was a police officer from boulder. >> you're not prepared for anything to happen to your child. you're supposed to nurture those children and they're your immortality. it's unbearable. >> you know, i was just -- i just couldn't -- i couldn't cry. i couldn't do anything but just stare at him because i couldn't